


In the Spaces Between

by VoluptuousPanic



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Handjobs and Boy Smells, Happy Ending (yes that kind), Hugh | Third of Five Lives, I am going to hell for this, M/M, PWP, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Sex on Space Ships, The Borg, alien dick, total smut, xBs (Star Trek)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:13:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24654397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VoluptuousPanic/pseuds/VoluptuousPanic
Summary: Utterly self-indulgent PWP.Thanks to the inimitableMadameReveusefor beta assistance.
Relationships: Elnor & Hugh | Third of Five, Elnor/Hugh | Third of Five
Comments: 19
Kudos: 52





	In the Spaces Between

Hugh closed his eyes, unable to look at Elnor. He knew Elnor’s impossibly big, dark eyes were open. The sensation of Elnor’s fingertips ghosting along his jaw, Elnor’s open palm skimming slowly, lightly over his throat was already too much. He felt Elnor’s breath on his face, the heat of his lips on his eyelids, his temple, on the vestiges of the implants and scars that marked his brow, his cheek. The dark curtain of Elnor’s loose hair moved across Hugh’s face as Elnor’s lips pressed to his other temple with a slow, warm exhale. 

“I don’t…I don’t know how to do this,” Elnor whispered. “I know what to do, what people do together. But I am afraid I will be wrong. I’ve never kissed anyone. I wanted to, but she did not wish to. I hope that you do.” 

Hugh shuddered an exhale of relief and desire. “I don’t know how to do this either.” The real, here with Elnor, in their cramped shared quarters of _La Sirena_ , was different than being with Six in Unimatrix Zero so long ago. Experiences in Unimatrix Zero were shared lucid dreams, like shared holo fantasies bound by the imaginations and experiences of willing participants. What had been missing with Six in the real was here with Elnor now—the impossible, visceral experience of desire. The overwhelming sensations of touch, taste, scent, and what Hugh knew was purely, uniquely chemical, but powerful enough to affect emotion, perception, and judgment. Short of the desire to leave the Collective, to be human, he’d never wanted something quite so badly. Unfettered desire was terrifying. Elnor was so young, so full of life, and Hugh knew Elnor wanted him back. 

Hugh felt Elnor’s hands frame his face and Hugh reached for him, sliding a hand across Elnor’s neck into the silken length of his hair to pull him close. Lips on his for the first time since Six, so long ago. Tender and tentative, soft and searching, the kiss over as quickly as it began. Elnor leaning down. Elnor’s forehead against his own. Why did this, of all things, undo Hugh so? Hugh touched Elnor’s face, his thumb tracing the bow of Elnor’s upper lip as Elnor’s hands plunged into his hair. The sensation of Elnor’s fingertips on his scalp wasn’t something he was prepared for. In answer, Hugh gently wound a hand in Elnor’s hair and felt another exhale of breath against his cheek. 

“I want to do it again.” Elnor’s whispered admission was thrilling. 

Hugh nodded unsteadily. He didn’t care for intoxicants, had difficulty metabolizing them, but the sensations were similarly dizzying. The crush of Elnor’s body against his was overwhelming, as was the hungry warmth of Elnor’s mouth. Hugh was drunk with it: the smooth gold of Elnor’s skin, his sweat sharp like crushed green leaves, the clean musk of his hair scented with something that made Hugh want to push his face into it. Elnor smelled of what Hugh knew of Vashti. Heat and open skies, sun and sand, and cool, safe, dark places, so different than Hugh’s own darkness. 

“Please,” Hugh whispered. He opened his eyes and watched Elnor nod, the naked want on Elnor’s face, not so different than the expression of impassioned concern he wore on the cube, before… Elnor looked haunted, young and unsure. Hugh closed his eyes to Elnor’s beauty and hesitated to imagine how he presented to Elnor. Strung tight, pained, aged. A frisson of surprise rocked his body as Elnor leaned in for another kiss, lush lips covering his own, the shock of heat as Elnor’s tongue shyly moved across his lips. Hugh found it felt natural to open his mouth under Elnor’s with a sigh, only to feel Elnor pull back with an elated hesitance when their tongues met. Hugh felt, rather than saw Elnor’s smile. Hugh smiled too.

“I think this is right,” Elnor said softly, bending to claim another kiss that Hugh leaned into with another nod, unable to resist. Resistance was futile. Resistance to any of this. Of course Hugh wanted Elnor. This. How could he not? How could anyone not want to experience such goodness, such beauty, both inside and out? 

Kissing was messy, electric and erotic, tender and altogether silly. Irresistible. The ridiculousness of its ubiquity among thousands of humanoid species and conspicuous absence from specific cultures of each. Pressing and entangling ones mouthparts with another’s as a prelude to mating, an anthropological echo of the feeding of infants. The ridiculous of tongues meeting and moving together, mouths hot, wet and saline. The ridiculousness of how good it felt, how Hugh’s body vibrated with a need he couldn’t define, and how he stood motionless in Elnor’s strong young arms that slowly, gently wound around him. 

“Touch me, too,” Elnor pleaded against Hugh’s lips. 

It was like a dam breaking and Hugh looked up to see Elnor with eyes closed. He touched Elnor’s neck again and watched, open-mouthed and aroused as Elnor tilted his head back, offering his throat. Hugh kissed him there, dragging unsure, inexperienced lips over the prominence of larynx, and down to the suprasternal notch that he found oddly, incongruously delicate between the sharp wings of Elnor’s broad clavicles. Anatomical understanding prepared Hugh for none of this. Nor was Hugh prepared for the power of instinct in knowing where to touch. He surrendered to the impulse to look at Elnor’s face again. 

Elnor smiled shyly, white teeth and golden skin in the low light, his hair all but shadowing them both where it hung pushed to one side and over his shoulder. Hugh shook his head with mute wonder and cupped Elnor’s cheek in an open palm that he drew up to capture a pointed ear in a caress that made Elnor shiver, made his eyes close with a shuddered breath. Elnor’s slender body was taut against his own, and Hugh ventured a shy caress over Elnor’s bare chest, out to a strong shoulder and down a smooth, sleek arm. Goosebumps and gossamer fuzz met Hugh’s fingertips. His own body thrummed with life, with dizzying arousal. He could hear his own heart, and Elnor’s faster pulse, both hammering warmly. 

Hugh sucked in a breath when Elnor lowered his head to softly breathe into Hugh’s ear, to move a hand to caress the nape of his neck and the implant at his jaw, to press a kiss to the small puckered scar of the tube port that once bisected his cheek, and another to the new weal that marked his neck where Narissa’s blade had nearly taken him. Elnor’s tender kisses moved across his face again, lips, eyes, organic and not so, forehead. 

“I like to look at you, Hugh,” Elnor said as if it were a confession. “I wanted to tell you but I was afraid it would create tension between us that would make you uncomfortable. I was worried that you….that you would object. You can remain so contained that your thoughts and feelings are hidden. But it is obvious that you like to look at me, too.” 

Until tonight, when they had crashed into one another in the small hours, Hugh hadn’t realized his fascination had been so transparent, or sure that the Elnor’s interest was indeed a shade different to Elnor’s enthusiasm toward everything, and more intimate than the duty to which Elnor had pledged himself. It had begun so simply, a dropped PADD sliding off of Hugh’s berth, Elnor’s sleepy scramble to retrieve it, a stray touch on its return leading first to clasped hands, and then to an embrace Hugh never wanted to leave. 

Now Elnor pressed his cheek to Hugh’s and ventured a caress that made Hugh tremble. Hugh turned his face into Elnor’s neck, relaxing into the motion of Elnor’s open hand moving slowly and surely over the soft shirt he’d put on to sleep in. Down his back from neck to hip, and back up again, gently stroking. Elnor’s fingertips traced the smooth virgin skin that lined the groove of Hugh’s spine, skimming the vestiges of neural ports that bordered it, and followed the texture of skin knotted with the preternaturally tight surface of biosynthetic integument in the places at Hugh’s hips where exo-plating had once been integrated with muscle and connective tissue, fused directly to the crest of his pelvis and sacrum. Elnor’s touch was gently accepting, without curiosity or titillation. 

“I want to be closer to you,” Elnor whispered, clutching at Hugh’s clothing for a moment, steering him closer by pajama pockets and drawstring to bring their bodies flush. Their mutual desire was evident in the places their bodies touched, hip to thighs, erections trapped by clothing but at the the ready for what, Hugh supposed neither of them knew at this moment. Hugh had felt nothing like it in all his years. Holo skipped over these bits. So did touching Six in Unimatrix Zero. 

“Tell me what to do.” Elnor pleaded against Hugh’s temple, trailing fingertips down the back of an arm, then down over Hugh’s forearm. It was pointless to tell Elnor it was the prosthetic arm, the one that wasn’t entirely real, but the synthetic synapses were so good, so well integrated with Hugh’s systems, that Hugh thrilled with the sensation of Elnor’s touch skimming slowly over the neural vellus that downed the skin. Elnor’s touch lingered at the place the organic met the engineered in a mosaic of fine hypertrophic scars.

“Kiss me.” It was a confession as much as direction. Hugh looked up into Elnor’s eyes as Elnor caught Hugh’s hand in his, warm and strong. 

“Do you not want…more?” 

“Do you?” Hugh asked. 

Elnor nodded, suddenly looking very young. His face was as serious as it had been in the moments he had pledged himself to Hugh’s cause. Hugh slipped his hand free of Elnor’s to reach up again to touch Elnor’s face. This time Elnor didn’t close his eyes, and Hugh met the tender challenge of Elnor’s gaze with his own. Hugh traced the sharpness of jaw and cheekbone, the wing of a brow, and felt a smile steal across his own lips as Elnor pushed his face into his palm with a look of sweet mischief Hugh had never seen before or dared to imagine.

“Computer, engage privacy,” Hugh managed. _La Sirena_ ’s systems, like his own, responded. 

With an almost rough caress, Hugh slid his hand up into Elnor’s hair to pull him down, and closer, for another kiss. This kiss was different: hungrier, deeper, more sure. Hugh trembled anew when Elnor’s teeth grazed his lower lip, when Elnor’s hands clutched his hips, and when warm fingertips sneaked under his shirt to flutter across pale skin. Hugh resisted the almost uncontrollable urge to passively submit, to mutely comply. Elnor deserved to be met with the same patience and gentle confidence, the same elated curiosity at touch. 

Hugh kissed Elnor back, his hand tightening into a gentle grip of Elnor’s hair as Elnor’s hand moved under Hugh’s shirt and over skin. Across belly, up the once-augmented frame of ribs, to the ruined expanse of flesh at Hugh’s chest where, long ago, impatient with medical technology, he’d rushed the painful process of removing Borg exo-plating with tension provided by simple tools and a Federation dermal regenerator. No one had touched him so intimately since the microsurgeries and regeneration under sedation undertaken to rectify the damage and complete that portion of reclamation, which was one of many reasons Hugh had never done with anyone what he was doing now, with Elnor. This tender touch, as Hugh had expected, was unfathomably different, as shocking and soothing as the first time he’d experienced the sluice of hot water over his whole body, or the first time he’d plunged himself into the sea at Okinawa. 

Hugh did comply when Elnor pulled back from the kiss to look down into his eyes. Elnor wore the soft, slightly questioning ghost of a smile that Hugh had come to know in the weeks on Nepenthe, the one that flickered across his face when he seemed to take joy in trusting his instincts. It showed Hugh again how young Elnor was, though for all his years, Hugh felt no more sure about his own actions. Hugh was certain, however, they were equally lost in this moment, and that whatever was going to happen would be negotiated as it unfolded, and that he was content to let Elnor take the lead. And he did submit, willingly lifting his arms when Elnor tugged his shirt up, and off. Hugh had been disrobed, stripped, and nearly flayed, all within a medical context. Indeed, he’d nearly flayed himself, repeatedly. Until now, he’d never been undressed. 

For a brief moment, Hugh closed his eyes again to ground himself in Elnor’s touch, to feel Elnor’s hand move across his chest, open over the biosilicon sternal plate that had long ago integrated with skin and bone to anchor thoracic plating and technology. Fingertips followed collarbone that Hugh was quite certain wasn’t organic, scars from ports above and below, and out to the ruin of a nipple, and with what felt like curiosity, to the other that was undamaged. At the sensation, Hugh sucked in another breath that he let out slowly. There was a kiss at his temple, and Elnor’s free hand nearly trembling into his. Elnor guided it over his own flawless, smooth skin, neck to chest, over dark nipples to belly, to the vee of muscle at his lean waist. Hugh looked at Elnor’s body, his hand in Elnor’s, watching the slow glide down and down. He couldn’t not look. Hugh rested his hand there at Elnor’s hip, finding his thumb moving over the jut of ilium almost unconsciously as Elnor pulled at a simple tuck of cloth that seemed to be the only binding on his trousers. A deft tug and wriggle to unwind, and Elnor was bare against him. 

The crass rumors Hugh had heard about Romulan males since first arriving to the Artifact were, in fact, true. Nothing at hand was so prodigious as to be ridiculous, but what was evidently a point of pride and vanity amongst some Romulan men was simply a fact with Elnor. That all of Elnor was beautifully wrought and exquisitely proportioned came as no surprise. Hugh turned his gaze away with a nervous swallow, realizing his mouth was open. 

“I hope that you are pleased with my body, Hugh,” Elnor said gently, then, his voice shy at Hugh’s cheekbone. “I would like very much to see the rest of yours.” 

“Yes,” Hugh whispered. It was the only answer and he was rewarded with a soft kiss that brought him back to his own body again. Small and strong, but damaged, blemished and run-down next to Elnor’s youth and golden beauty. Some parts were in legitimate need of repair where implants were degrading, others where they had ceased to function and aging organics were struggling to meet demand, others simply imperfectly human. But some, in the present moment, were entirely human and functioning quite well if not so prettily as Elnor’s. Hugh remembered then the confusion of his first experience with arousal, the conflicting sensations and feelings, and his first experience giving in to it, the first experience of desire, of being touched, in Unimatrix Zero, in holo. Of touching his own skin once he was able to do so, and touching himself once he understood there was no essential shame necessary to that aspect of humanity. 

Being touched, now, as Elnor’s palm skimmed over his skin again, as if Elnor were uncertain where to touch first. Hugh didn’t mind. He didn’t know where he wanted to be touched first either, or whether he was content for whatever they were doing to take hours, or if he just wanted it—whatever it was—to happen. Whatever it was was that Hugh had expected from sex and the interactions that led up to it was just as hard to pin down, but this—with Elnor—naive and fragile as it was, was safe. The intimate connection that Hugh had failed to make with Six hadn’t been, for either of them, and was fraught with anxiety. In this moment, Hugh finally understood. He looked up to find Elnor looking down at him, dark eyes heavy, teeth working over his lower lip. Elnor kissed him then, his mouth sure and confident, even as his hand trembled at Hugh’s chest where he pressed it to Hugh’s heart with enough gentle strength and pressure that Hugh felt his own pulse alive under Elnor’s palm. 

Elnor’s knuckles lightly followed a pectoral muscle, and then the line down from the sternal plate over his belly to the divot of his navel that Hugh knew was called the linea alba. Hugh shivered, feeling what little fuzz that downed his body rising anew with sensation. Elnor grinned, and the warm, sweet smile stayed on his face as he touched the plate again. Moments later the swell of biceps, then the access points integrated into Hugh’s left arm, fused with humerus and radius, the adjacent port that remained live in case of emergency need for regeneration beyond organic bodily imperatives for sleep and sustenance. Hugh still wasn’t sure why he’d let them remain, when they could have been planed down to bone and hidden. It had never seemed important to remove tech that was neither bulky nor excessively invasive, or that he’d never planned to let anyone see. And now Elnor’s beautiful hands were on him, fingertips idly tracing muscle and sinew and bone, and Elnor’s attention was undoubtedly on his skin, on flesh, the shape of him, and not the remains and devastation of implants. 

“You’re strong. I do not understand why you hide this.” 

“Because of what I am. What I have been,” Hugh answered. The symmetry and strength of physique that Hugh strove for, he knew came from decades of adaptation to the routines of physical therapy that began with reclamation and rehabilitation in earnest, under observation, and sometimes care. Though he recognized the bodily aesthetics of others, he had no investment in the idea that the ravaged body he’d made peace with would be desired. Honing his body was simply an exercise in control. Elnor’s gaze was on him now, in frank appraisal, and Hugh was not resistant to the admiration. 

“You are only Hugh,” Elnor said gently, dark eyes meeting Hugh’s. “And I wish to be only Elnor with you.” He looked away, suddenly shy again, looking down Hugh’s body.

Hugh looked down too, finding nothing but Elnor, flat belly, slim hips, and long legs. Endless golden skin. The only hair on his body the dark wisps at his armpits, and lower around young flesh proud and ready. And elegant. Hugh breathed, open-mouthed and expectant as Elnor’s fingertips glided down his sides to the tie of his pajama bottoms low on his belly. Rapt, he watched Elnor pull at the tie, then at the waistband until they fell. Hugh’s erection sprang free, and he stood in the puddle of cloth, as naked as Elnor. An elated laugh surfaced from somewhere and Hugh found himself smiling. 

“We are different,” Elnor whispered, small wonder in his voice, his face lighting with a bright smile. 

Hugh felt his face flush in response. “We’re different species. Of course we are.”

“But also probably the same. May—”

Hugh interrupted with a whisper. “Yes.”

Elnor’s breath in his ear, Hugh’s body quaked with the shock of Elnor’s touch, the backs of fingers slowly, lightly moving up the shaft of his cock. Anatomical sensibility was irrelevant, that was the only word for it now. There were no subroutines for lust or passion or pleasure or gentleness. The caress seared Hugh’s skin, made his breathing shudder, and an exhale come in a soft sound. There was a tender kiss at his cheek and the gentle pressure of Elnor’s body guiding him backwards to his berth. They lay down together, bodies tangling instinctively, mouths meeting with fresh kisses that were deeper, less curious now that tender exploration had a trajectory, now that skin touched skin. 

Hugh had been held and soothed before, but never like this. Of course, never without clothes. Never had he been held so tightly or with such feeling, or borne the weight of someone else’s body with such pleasure. It was as if Elnor was trying to get inside his skin as they kissed, while opening himself in the same way for Hugh. Elnor’s hands moved over his body, and Hugh answered, following the slowly shifting shapes of Elnor’s long back, his long bones, the tender and unmarked bumps of his vertebrae, the heavy dark sheaf of his hair. There was nothing to spare on Elnor, every inch of him lean, his smooth skin tight, the slender length of his body belying his size. Hugh had never felt so small in a way that didn’t bring fear. As their kiss settled into a regular rhythm that their bodies followed, Hugh noticed Elnor’s hand at his hip, warm palm over the frame of sinew at the bend of his thigh where tender skin had somehow escaped the damage that marked other close places on his body. Elnor’s thumb followed the hip flexor and Hugh felt like he was melting. He responded without thought or resistance, slowly trailing a tentative hand over the curve of Elnor’s backside, winning a soft exhale into his mouth and the gentle tightening of Elnor’s body against him. 

After a tender kiss, Elnor pulled away to twist his hair into a coil that he passed over one wrist and then the other in a deft motion that left his hair gathered in a loose knot at the nape of his neck. One silken lock that he missed framed the side of his face. Hugh reached up to gently tuck it behind Elnor’s ear, and sneaked another touch to Elnor’s cheek, where the barest ghost of stubble met Hugh’s fingertips. 

Elnor held Hugh’s wrist and pressed a kiss into his palm. “I am not frightened. I am no longer afraid I will be wrong,” he said softly, “I hope that you are not either.” 

“No,” Hugh whispered, finding himself shaking his head with increased sureness as Elnor leaned over him again took his thumb into his hot mouth. Hugh watched in rapt disbelief as Elnor’s eyes closed as he pulled his thumb from Elnor’s wet lips, feeling Elnor’s tongue, and the catch of Elnor’s teeth across his skin. Where had Elnor learned to do such a thing? Where had the code been written for the simple, tender things that felt good to so many species? Elnor smiled into Hugh’s palm again. 

Hugh dragged his thumb over Elnor’s lips and watched Elnor’s eyes open, dark and liquid, to meet his own. Elnor pressed closer again, pushing his thigh between Hugh’s legs, cock hard against Hugh’s between their bellies. Hugh’s hips bucked up to Elnor’s thigh with sensation and he closed his eyes to Elnor’s gaze. He listened to Elnor breathe over him, his own breath, his racing heart, the whispering sound that skin made on skin. And the soft, nearly anguished moan of pleasure that escaped his lips at Elnor’s first earnest touch, when Elnor’s hand, warm and sure, wrapped round both of them together and stroked slowly upward, then back down again. Hugh was a live wire, all sensation beginning and ending where his flesh met Elnor’s and he shook with it, back arching off the berth, so close already. 

“Au’e,” Elnor exhaled slowly and shifted his body, hands skimming Hugh’s belly with a tender, calming caress. “Be still, e’lev.” 

Without ever having done this before, Hugh knew what was coming next, and was more than agreeable. He found himself watching open-mouthed and disbelieving as Elnor tracked a warm trail of kisses down his chest and lower, and as Elnor gripped and opened his mouth to take in his cock as gently, naturally, purposefully as Elnor did everything. The whole of Elnor’s body was curled between Hugh’s open legs, and the heat of it and of Elnor’s mouth was nothing like anything Hugh had ever felt in holo. This simple act of almost worship, as common to humanoid races as kissing, was at the forefront of the few, tightly guarded fantasies Hugh allowed himself to have. And it was happening, here in Hugh’s berth with the handsome warrior who had come to his rescue, but Hugh was unable to dwell on the improbability and absurdity of the entire situation with the new distraction of Elnor’s tongue moving in a lazy swirl of sensation. Hugh opened his eyes again to look down his own body, down scarred chest and belly and hard, thickened tissue over his hipbones, to watch Elnor’s dark head slowly, almost lazily rise and fall. A tender caress given with the back of a hand seared the inside of Hugh’s thigh. Hugh noticed then that Elnor’s other hand was open against his ribs, gentle against skin that was, like all the places Elnor presently touched, highly sensitive, unscathed during reclamation. Hugh reached down and stroked over Elnor’s head, then caught Elnor’s hand in his, fingers sliding between Elnor’s.

“Did you not like that touch?” Elnor asked after releasing Hugh’s flesh with a soft, wet pop, his voice a barely audible whisper, the coolness of his breath against Hugh’s wet skin almost shocking. “I am touching you the way I think that I would like to be touched,” he added. 

‘I did like it, very much,” Hugh whispered. “But I also wanted to hold your hand.” 

“Giving you pleasure fills me with joy,” Elnor answered. “It also makes me think of what will happen next.” He kissed Hugh’s hand and pushed it into his hair again as he returned to the gentle task before him. 

Hugh didn’t fight the pleasure and closed his eyes against the dim light, relaxing so thoroughly he felt as if he and Elnor could be pulled down through the berth together. He let both hands rest lightly on Elnor’s head, fingertips following the curve of skull, down to slender neck and back again. Elnor’s mouth and his hands moved gently, reverently, until a moment that Hugh was surprised by a firm and greedy stroke to his cock as Elnor took him deep. Hugh heard his own cry punctuate the touch and felt Elnor’s answer, a warm exhale that stirred hair and sensitive skin with something that felt like a laugh. Hugh opened his eyes when the liquid heat of Elnor’s mouth was gone, and he watched in awe as Elnor’s face pressed between his legs, nose nudging at scrotum, hot mouth and tongue even lower. Twitching with pleasure, Hugh brought his hands up to cover his face, then looked down again, unashamed, with conviction and wonder at the smooth, graceful motion of Elnor’s hand pumping his cock. This tender onslaught of touch was what fantasy and programming could never prepare for, and Hugh marveled at the competing intensity of feeling from two actions occurring so close together. Then he saw Elnor’s smile again, lips wet and swollen, as Elnor came up for a breath, before returning to suck, mouth and hands working together. No more direct communication was necessary. 

It was impossible for Hugh to cling to the edge of orgasm to ride it out as he did on his own given the luxury of time and privacy. Hugh knew that were this to happen again, if Elnor wanted it, they could hopefully learn each other. Hugh happily succumbed, giving in to a slow and deep swoon, back arching until his head lifted from the berth as his body quaked. Coming was like falling or flying. He saw stars. Being caught and eased down by another’s presence and care was beyond Hugh’s imagining. His hips found their own unsteady primal rhythm again as Elnor drew out the last shivers with patience that Hugh supposed Elnor had learned with himself. With that thought, Hugh shook with a final frisson of sensation and a sigh as Elnor released him from his mouth, if not his hand. Elnor met his eyes and swallowed. 

“How did you know what to do?” Hugh asked unsteadily, realizing he’d stated no preferences, provided no direction. He’d lain there and taken everything that was so generously offered. 

“No knowledge has been forbidden to me,” Elnor explained gently with a shrug and a small smile. He rested his cheek against Hugh’s hipbone, hand still full. Hugh trembled at the small, idle motions of Elnor’s hand as he spoke. “Virginity is a state of being, rather than a statement of value, even for the Qowat Milat. Chastity is state of being, not a mandate. I am merely untouched by another. I am not ignorant to desire or sex, only innocent to it.” Elnor paused, brows knitting together as he collected his thoughts. “Romulan mating behaviors are complicated and relations may have many configurations. As partners of the same sex cannot procreate, such configurations serve love, pleasure, power, or some combination. I know that power is not a consideration of what is happening between us, so I can only believe that we come together for the pleasure of love. I know what it is that I feel.” Elnor turned his face into Hugh’s belly with a sly smile and loosed Hugh’s over-sensitive erection at last.

Hugh sighed a long, content sigh. He reached down to stroke Elnor’s head again, sliding fingers into his knotted hair and pulling it free. This moment that Hugh would live in forever if he could—cared for, desired, sated—surpassed any fantasy in its sweetness. What was most confusing to Hugh was that the things that had happened, what Elnor had done to him, each touch and caress, felt entirely natural and right, without an excess of thought or anxiety. What was not confusing was that Hugh knew exactly what it was that he felt, too, only there were no words for it. 

“And you?” Elnor asked, so softly it was a puff of warmth at Hugh’s navel. 

Hugh ran his fingertips along the edge of Elnor’s ear, then felt his hand slide across Elnor’s long neck with a sudden and comfortable possessiveness. He would hold this experience. This intimacy. Possibly a less than autonomic response to the dim memories of being connected though in the Collective. Lore. Later memories of cramped conditions, later still of the first experiences of privacy, touch. Six. Unimatrix Zero. An interactive holo of Andorian thaan and chan fucking with abandon. Millennia of pan-species pornography. Detailed and specific knowledge of anatomy and physiology, social and sexual behaviors of multiple species gained through assimilation and arcane study, alike. Detailed and specific knowledge of various privately funded holosuite programs developed for multi-modal, yet endlessly ethical touch and intimacy therapeutics that he was still, until recently, fighting to have integrated into post-reclamation rehabilitation. All there, in Hugh’s head, uploaded, learned, both dormant junk and part of the memory palace that let him navigate his work, his life. Navigating this, with Elnor, was different. 

“In the Collective, sex is irrelevant. Relations are irrelevant. Both are impossible,” Hugh said, voice quiet in the silence of their quarters. He drew his fingers through Elnor’s hair with slow strokes that Elnor leaned into. 

“There is no love?” Elnor asked softly.

“No,” Hugh answered, feeling a tug at his heart with the admission. “But there was a place, of dreams, accessible through a quirk of programming that I carried. Thousands others carried, maybe millions eventually, before it ended. But the things that happened there were dreams, even though they were lucid, and others’ thoughts could interact to change the landscape and environment. But there was free will and agency. It was beautiful. And strange.”

“Like dreams?” Elnor asked, rising onto an elbow.

Hugh nodded slowly and trailed a hand down Elnor’s shoulder. Without speaking, they negotiated the space of the narrow berth, rearranging naturally until Elnor lay spooned in the smaller curve of Hugh’s body. And as natural as it was to reposition, it was also natural for Hugh to press his face into Elnor’s neck with a line of open-mouthed kisses that let him taste Elnor’s skin. Salt. Push his face into whatever it was in Elnor’s hair that smelled sweet, earthy, and warm. Hugh listened to Elnor breathe, felt Elnor’s pulse flutter against his palm where it was pressed to Elnor’s ribs. He found the same beat of blood at Elnor’s neck before kissing an ear and smiled into the pointed shell when Elnor made an unmistakeable sound of pleasure and flexed against him. 

“Imirrhihhse’Reh,” Elnor murmured into the crook of arm where his head lay pillowed. 

Hugh pressed a kiss to Elnor’s temple, not quite sure he’d heard what he thought he had. But Hugh knew, and his heart hammered in astonishment, every hair on his body rising even if his cock wouldn’t again. “What?” he asked, out of selfish desire to hear the whispered Rihan again, though he also knew he couldn’t currently oblige.

“I want you to fuck me,” Elnor whispered and reached back to haul Hugh’s head down for a deep kiss that left him breathless.

“Oh, h’levreinnye, I can’t. Bodies only work like that when they’re as young as yours,” Hugh explained. 

“But you want to do it?” 

“I do.” In Hugh’s life there had been few opportunities to act without considering consequences, to proceed based wholly on desire or whim. Physiology permitting, this would be one of them. He looked down at Elnor and watched mischief bloom shyly across his face again when Elnor tried to hide a smile. Hugh had never seen anything more beautiful, not even the first time with Six in Unimatrix Zero when Hugh had used Elnor’s words and shared with Six the mutual imagining of being together, under Six, kissed, penetrated, loved at least in the moment. Elnor wanted this, and Hugh marveled. 

Hugh yielded to the gentle pressure on the back of his neck and let Elnor pull him down for another kiss that was as tender and questioning at their first, lips soft, tongues shy. It was an invitation that Hugh accepted as eagerly as he knew how as Elnor turned under him, and their bodies slotted together. Elnor’s hands on him again, moving from nape to natal cleft and back again, fingertips deliberately tracing the neural ports this time in a slow caress that followed the length of Hugh’s spine in the wholly unnatural, ordered symmetry of assimilation. Hugh hadn’t considered the erotic possibilities independent of fetishization that he normally approached with appropriately clinical numbness. But the specter of work and other people’s pathologies with regard to reclamation weren’t welcome here and he arched against Elnor’s touch, pressing his chest to Elnor’s and his hips between Elnor’s open thighs. The touch felt good, and Hugh trusted Elnor’s intent without question. And though Elnor had begun to buck against him softly and perhaps unconsciously, the kiss remained unhurried, and Hugh listened to the wet sounds their mouths made, the sounds of breathing together. 

“Tell me what you like,” Hugh asked against Elnor’s lips. He was surprised by his own frankness, the ease of asking, his anticipation of Elnor’s answer, which he knew would be clear, informative, abrasively candid. Mystery and innuendo suited neither of them. He cupped Elnor’s sharp jaw in his hands and watched Elnor consider, dark eyes darting to the side as he thought, and then back up, face open. Idly, Hugh lifted a fingertip to stroke the sweep of an eyebrow, then down the bridge of Elnor’s nose. Elnor smiled, cheeks coloring, and Hugh knew from the warmth of his own face that he blushed too. 

“I don’t know what I like. I know only what I do to myself. I have only imagined what we are doing, and it is both exactly as expected and completely different than I imagined.” Elnor’s voice was soft and small, as if he chose his words carefully. “But I wish for you to continue. And I wish to feel the same pleasure that you did. Now I wish for you to touch me.” Elnor caught Hugh’s hand in his and brought it to his mouth, wetly dragging the full width of his tongue across Hugh’s open palm before he brought Hugh’s hand down between their bodies to grip his cock. Hugh was hard again, and pleasantly scandalized.

Not breaking contact with Elnor’s body, Hugh moved to the side, rising on an elbow to to look down. First at Elnor’s face, placid but expectant, eyes closed, teeth working at lower lip again. Impulsively, Hugh pressed a kiss to Elnor’s lips, then let his gaze continue. Given more time and less urgency, Hugh wanted to learn every inch of Elnor, to move slowly, slowly down, taking time to touch, to kiss. Graceful neck, hollows of collarbones, musky armpits, the tender skin over ribs, nipples, the tiny hollow at the base of Elnor’s sternum, sleek muscles of belly, twin arcs of iliac crest, small of back, the backs of knees, and all the wondrous golden flesh that lay between. Hugh wanted to smell him, to learn the scent of his skin, and the rich, subtle funk of close places. Hugh also wanted to be known, to cede himself to Elnor’s tender acceptance and fascination. For now, this would do and Hugh was more than ready. His heart had slowed to normal, and there were no butterflies in his belly. He knew what to do. 

Hugh hooked his knee over Elnor’s because it made sense, because it was comfortable, because Elnor’s long limbs and taut skin felt good. Hugh looked at what he held. Hot and heavy, Elnor’s cock spanned the length of Hugh’s hand from wrist to fingertip, and curved gently, thickly back toward Elnor’s belly, but was otherwise unremarkable. Contrary to prurient legend, and beyond the second delicate ridge of the glans and the presence of the baculum in some populations, Vulcanoid male genitals weren’t particularly exotic. For that, Hugh was grateful. Elnor was painfully hard in that way that came with youth and vitality. Hugh remembered the fortitude of those erections, for which he’d had no outlet. Neither, he supposed, had Elnor until now. 

Hugh offered a long, smooth stroke to Elnor’s cock that had Elnor nearly writhe on the berth beside him, whispering against Hugh’s throat in a flood of Rihan that came too quickly and with too much sibilance for Hugh to understand. Hugh had only Elnor’s lead to follow, to touch as he would like to be touched. Hugh used the same twisting upstroke and squeeze he used on himself, only there was much more to touch. Soon, Hugh held his hand still, forearm braced on Elnor’s hipbone with Elnor slowly thrusting up into his hand in an easy rhythm, cock moving smoothly and freely through Hugh’s loose grip borne on the viscous moisture of saliva and pre-ejaculate. 

Hugh watched Elnor’s face with wonderment in the moments Elnor chose not to push his face into the crook of Hugh’s neck. Elnor’s eyes fluttering open and closing again. Elnor’s tongue darting out to wet open lips. Elnor, who was already open in all ways, was so beautiful, so vulnerable like this, completely unguarded, uninhibited in experiencing pleasure. Hugh was unsure if he’d been this naked with Elnor. With fresh arousal Hugh felt an unfamiliar, but intriguing heat of selfishness and he basked in it, watching Elnor ride the small wave of something that made his cock twitch in Hugh’s hand. In this moment, Elnor was utterly his. Hugh tightened his grip and there was a soft, breathy cry, a new, small exhale of effort with each thrust of Elnor’s hips. Hugh found his own body moving in complement, but gently, lazily, erection tight against Elnor’s hip. 

“Is it good?” Hugh asked softly.

Elnor nodded and licked his lips. “It’s good,” he breathed and turned his face up for a kiss. 

Hugh obliged, closing his eyes and leaning into a kiss so deep and hungry that their rhythm faltered. He started at the quick, sharp pressure of Elnor’s teeth on his tongue, and pulled back to feel Elnor’s smile and a huff of soft laughter on his lips as Elnor’s hand sneaked between their bodies to touch him. Hugh exhaled slowly at the rapture of Elnor’s palm and long fingers wrapping around him, but gently guided Elnor’s touch away.

“This is for you. Take what you need. I’ve already had mine,” Hugh whispered, firming his grip again. 

Elnor nodded with a squeeze to Hugh’s forearm. Hugh saw no confusion or disappointment on his face. He kissed the space between Elnor’s slanted brows. In response, a smile flickered and Elnor arched his neck, bringing a hand to his own throat. Hugh stared brazenly, feeling the selfishness simmer to possessiveness as Elnor touched himself, palm dragging firmly and forcefully from neck to chest and lower, leaving skin ruddy with friction. Elnor pinched one nipple, then the other, then reached down, hand passing over Hugh’s to reach between his own legs and cup his scrotum in an open palm. It was drawn up tight. Elnor would come soon. 

Hugh repositioned his body and moved down swiftly, opening his mouth to Elnor’s cock without pause. Elnor made a sound of surprise, almost a shout, and Hugh felt the tender reward of Elnor’s palm moving over his head in a luxurious caress that mussed his hair. Saline, slightly sweet, Elnor’s cock tasted like his kisses. He smelled of heady sweat and that fragrant earthiness that Hugh couldn’t get out of his head. He inhaled greedily and relaxed into the motion of glans across his lips and tongue, each delicate ridge distinct. Elnor’s restraint was palpable and Hugh used a hand to control depth and pressure. Hands and mouth moving together, soft skin and wet velvety flesh, and Elnor’s long thighs open, so open. The motion was almost meditative, Elnor’s cock through wet palm into mouth with a swirl of tongue and back again, over and over in a slow rhythm. Hugh felt Elnor move, felt him take the the hand that rested on the inside of a thigh, felt Elnor’s mouth on his fingers. He looked up to watch Elnor spit, a thread of saliva between his wet lips and Hugh’s fingertips. Elnor’s eyes met Hugh’s and Hugh knew what Elnor wanted. Elnor nodded slowly, and tilted his head in question, hair slipping across his shoulder and teeth on his lower lip again as he unfurled his body to lie back. Elnor’s eyes were huge. Hugh was sure his were too. 

Crouched in the space of Elnor’s open thighs, Hugh returned to Elnor’s cock and brought his hand down. Elnor lay still, breathing hard, expectantly. Hugh could hear Elnor’s heart, feel it in the pulse that beat against his palm. Slippery fingers into the cleft deep between Elnor’s legs, wet against hot skin, Elnor pushing against him with a soft cry of frustration. Resistance, and a finger breached the muscle to slide smoothly in. A second just as easily. A single deep, slow, stroke that Hugh felt in his cock, as if giving Elnor what he asked for. Another stroke, and Elnor’s body trembled and arced, nearly vibrating as he came with a deep, breathy moan, body pulsing around Hugh’s fingers with unrelenting tightness, and a flood of salt and copper tang into Hugh’s mouth. Hugh felt himself smile, elated and triumphant as he swallowed, mouth still full and hands busy until the end when Elnor stopped moving and lay warm and quivering, gently panting. 

“Hugh,” Elnor whispered in a long, shaky exhale after the final tremor. 

Hugh let Elnor’s cock go, let his fingers slip from inside, drawing back slow and soft in a long caress that made Elnor shudder and cover his face with the crook of his elbow. “That’s me,” Hugh answered afterwards, flirting shyly, rising onto an elbow and looking up the plane of Elnor’s belly and chest. 

Hugh had never seen Elnor so subdued. Elnor was quiet as he scrubbed a hand over his face, then looked down, eyes heavy, as dark and liquid with sleepiness as they’d been with arousal. He blinked slowly as if waking and a small, sweet smile lit his face. Elnor laughed softly and took Hugh’s wet hand in his. “Sex is messy,” he said. “And I am sleepy. I hope the ways that I touched you felt as good as the ways you touched me.” He squeezed Hugh’s hand and Hugh returned the pressure, thumb moving across Elnor’s knuckles as Elnor considered a thought. Hugh could see the wheels turning as Elnor’s brows knit together. “I hope the things we did together hold your interest. I want to do them again if you want the same.” 

Hugh blinked. He was tired too. And old. A fragile bag of organics and integrated parts that functioned as something approximating human. There were few firsts left for him, and few that he’d been able to luxuriate in, few experiences that hadn’t been forced on him by necessity. This time with Elnor, whatever small flame that had sparked was one of them, but Hugh didn’t know where to place gratitude. With the Collective and Nepenthe, for delivering him back to himself when things could have gone differently, or with Elnor for his huge, open heart? Or with himself, for not fearing the consequence of desire. Hugh squeezed Elnor’s hand again, then rose over him, chest and belly skimming Elnor’s. He shivered with a long, slow caress to spinal ports as he draped himself over Elnor, opening his legs over Elnor’s hips and sinking into his arms. He kissed Elnor’s neck. Elnor answered with a soft press of lips to the implant at Hugh’s brow. 

Elnor’s breath was warm, his voice soft, hands idly stroking the broad expanse of biosynthetic skin at his lower back. Hugh didn’t remember it being so sensitive. “I am thinking of you,” Elnor said. “And how I want to sleep beside you. And I am also thinking that I would like a bath, but I cannot have one, because there is only a shower.”

“I have an extra water credit.” Hugh offered, though the suggestion was less than equitable in comparison to the thought of having an actual bath, being neck deep in hot water. With Elnor. 

“It’s yours,” Elnor breathed. 

“No, we’ll use it together.”

As if they were children, hurried for play, Hugh and Elnor abruptly rose together in a confusion of limbs, Elnor winning by virtue of sheer size and weight, rather than youth or athleticism. In the harsh light of the tiny bathroom, they laughed, then were shy again. While Elnor knotted his hair, Hugh cashed his credit for what he estimated would be five minutes of tepid water. They stood together under the meager flow, staying out of each other’s way as best they could. There was no time to enjoy watching Elnor touch himself as he rinsed, no luxuriation, and somehow, though less sentimental, soaping and scrubbing together was more intimate than sex. When the flow stopped, they stood dripping for a moment too long. Hugh reached for a towel and passed it to Elnor, then took one for himself. With a touch to Hugh’s cheek, Elnor left Hugh alone with himself. 

In the mirror, Hugh appraised himself. Something was different, and had been for the past few weeks, since healing on Nepenthe without the chatter of other voices. Even now, it was quiet, save for occasional unintentional sub-interference from Seven. He supposed it was probably the same for her. Hugh’s time on the Artifact had amounted to over a decade, the past two or three years without respite, until Narissa had seen fit to kill him. This newness was borne of quiet since leaving. Hugh liked being quiet with Elnor. And that Elnor’s chatter was immediate, animated, and spoken aloud. Hugh dragged a hand through his wet hair. It was, perhaps, his only vanity. He didn’t often take the chance to look at himself beyond assessing the need for a shave or a haircut, or to examine the persistent dermatitis that occasionally arose around implants until a scheduled regeneration cycle could goad tired and cranky nanites into dealing with it. Six had always told him he was beautiful, but in comparison to Six’s white gold perfection, Hugh didn’t pause to consider himself beyond whether he was functioning properly and presentable. 

In the mirror, Hugh watched Elnor ready himself for bed. Elnor, a gentle weapon, easy in his nakedness, but completely unaware of his beauty, standing in the middle of the dim room as he pulled a comb through his hair. Hugh’s eyes followed the motion of Elnor’s arm with each stroke, and then returned to his own reflection as Elnor wandered out of view. Hugh supposed that Six had been right, and the half a face Hugh had in his youth had been pretty. So much had changed. He pushed his hair back into order, then rubbed at his organic eye, and considered brushing his teeth again, but he’d readied himself for bed only an hour or two before, and the only thing that had been in his mouth since then was Elnor. 

“Sleep with me,” Elnor said softly when Hugh returned to the room. Elnor was sitting up in his berth, offering half a glass of water at arm’s length. 

Hugh took it eagerly with a nod of thanks, and drank, then collected his pajamas and tee-shirt from where they still lay on the floor. He dressed again, aware of Elnor’s gaze, then slipped into bed beside Elnor. 

“You don’t need clothes. I am naked.”

Hugh laughed. ‘Thank you for that penetrating glimpse into the obvious,” he said gently, feeling a grin pull at his face and an exasperated exhale from Elnor. He slid a possessive hand over Elnor’s bare hip. “I sleep better this way. For now at least.” It was true, and explaining the reasons why could wait. 

“Okay,” Elnor agreed.

Hugh sighed in pleasure and surprise as Elnor insinuated himself against his side, and moved with him, curling his body around Elnor’s as Elnor turned to face the wall. Which, Hugh remembered, was the way Elnor usually slept. Hugh settled himself, and slid an arm across Elnor’s waist. “Computer, lights,” he murmured into Elnor’s hair, and their quarters went dark.


End file.
